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Groupon Announces First Quarter 2012 Results
- martinshen 15y agoI think Groupon has far more potential than people assume. By being the biggest and having established some integration with local merchants, they could dominate the local space beyond just daily deals.
- loceng 15y agoExcept for the market is changing.
- scarface548 15y agoWhich market isn't changing?. No good business is build assuming that market wont change.
- debacle 15y agoOn one hand, good for them and hopefully they'll be profitable in Q2. On the other hand, how can we be sure these are the real numbers will all of the recent scandal?
- tonycoco 15y agoHopefully, because the SEC is doing their job.
- capred 15y agoUnfortunately its not about the desire for the SEC todo their job, its ability. New top-grads in finance (and highly sought after performers) go to work at large banks simply based on incentive structures. The SEC is out gunned from the get-go.
- treenyc 15y agoThat is great news. Groupon is a great company that can help build local business, local communities and in turn raise the popsicle index. That make it far more important than what Facebook or any other trendy startup is doing.
- jbigelow76 15y agoFor everyone like me that has to look up the "Popsicle Index" here you go: http://solari.com/blog/the-popsicle-index-rant/ http://solari.com/blog/the-popsicle-index-rant/ It's a succinct and catchy concept, the rant seems oversimplified IMO, but I do like the concept.
- Almaviva 15y agoIronically I think Popsicles actually reduce their own index! Empty calories and concentrated sugar being given to children probably harms their health in the long run.
- vyrotek 15y agoPerhaps it needs to be replaced with a bottle of water?
- jbigelow76 15y agoTrue, but the whimsy of a popsicle is probably part of the reason the concept resonates with people.
- brokentone 15y agoMany people would disagree with you. Groupon has been shifty with their earnings and filings each time till now (e.g. http://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2011/11/22/history-repeating-itself-groupons-questionable-accounting-practices-are-nothing-new/ http://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2011/11/22/history-re...), and currently being investigated for it (http://ansonalex.com/infographics/groupon-sec-fililing-and-investigation-information-infographic/ http://ansonalex.com/infographics/groupon-sec-fililing-and-i...). There have been various statements by former/current employees about inflating prices (http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-17/tech/30288824_1_sales-reps-groupon-inflation http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-17/tech/30288824...), and others that find negative Yelp effect from Groupon (http://mybiasedcoin.blogspot.com/2012/03/groupon-effect-on-yelp-ratings-guest.html http://mybiasedcoin.blogspot.com/2012/03/groupon-effect-on-y...), and businesses almost shut down as a result (http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/groupon-bakery-102000-cupcakes http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-...)
- marcusf 15y agoSo revenues up from $295m to $559m and operating income from -$146mn to $-12mn. Managing to grow revenue while narrowing the gap to black by quite a margin, good on them. I just wish they would quite re-stating the non-GAAP numbers. What value do they have beyond letting the press release have a dubious headline?
- pitdesi 15y agoActually most companies and ALL analysts use non-GAAP numbers (search for your favorite company + non-gaap https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=google+non-gaap https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...)... it reflects the true nature of the business. They are also referred to as pro-forma numbers. There isn't any funny business going on here. It is good that we have GAAP so you can compare apples to apples in different industries but for a further breakdown non-GAAP numbers are very useful to an analyst.
- marcusf 15y agoYeah but the non-GAAP numbers exclude customer acquisition costs (e.g. marketing). Not sure why that's excluded as marketing is a continuous and fundamental cost of doing business.
- pitdesi 15y agoNo they don't. You misunderstood what acquisition-related costs means. Acquisition related costs are costs related to acquiring another company, not acquiring a customer. It is completely standard practice to treat one-time costs like that differently.
- marcusf 15y agoOk, sorry, I misunderstood. I had lingering memories of the critiques against groupons earlier non-GAAP measures [1][2][3][4][5][6] but the non-GAAP net income mostly seems to exclude stock, acquistion costs are pretty low and very clearly separated from marketing and customer acquisitions. Again, my bad. [1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903635604576472531846174782.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190363560457647... [2] http://www3.cfo.com/article/2012/2/banking-capital-markets_groupon-earnings-net-loss-accounting http://www3.cfo.com/article/2012/2/banking-capital-markets_g... [3] http://blogs.smeal.psu.edu/grumpyoldaccountants/archives/530 http://blogs.smeal.psu.edu/grumpyoldaccountants/archives/530 [4] http://www.scalefinance.com/accounting-finance-and-groupons-ipo-mess/ http://www.scalefinance.com/accounting-finance-and-groupons-... [5] http://blog.agrawals.org/2011/09/24/groupons-cost-of-revenue-is-soaring/ http://blog.agrawals.org/2011/09/24/groupons-cost-of-revenue... [6] http://takingpitches.com/2011/06/04/groupon-s1-ipo-marketing-spend-subscriber-acquisition-cost-or-priming-the-pump/ http://takingpitches.com/2011/06/04/groupon-s1-ipo-marketing...
- SODaniel 15y agoWhat worries me is that Groupon is still just a company that 'happened' to be able to raise enough capital to become the biggest of 100s of businesses all doing the same thing. Nothing about their business is hard to replicate, nothing is revolutionary, nothing has not been done before. It seems many investors and analysts see a 'social media shopping experience' while all I see is a flyer in my mailbox 'on the internet'. What's to stop Groupon from becoming the MySpace of online coupons to a future Facebook in the same sphere?
- drumdance 15y agoThis is somewhat true of Amazon as well, though they later went on innovate with their web services. Early on they just happened to be one of the first and capitalized on their access to cheap capital.
- sabat 15y agoI don't think Amazon falls into the same bucket. Most of what Amazon does is a bit better than its would-be competition. Whereas what Groupon does is exactly what everyone else would do.
- numbsafari 15y agoI agree. What a lot of people don't realize is that Amazon has amazing logistics and considerable skill in merchandising. Building that logistics footprint is why Amazon has survived and others failed (speaking as someone who worked for an early competitor). Look at Best Buy and ask yourself, is Amazon really so easy to replicate? Granted... I still don't think Amazon is worth the crazy multiple that they trade at, but you can't put them in the same class of company as GroupOn. What GroupOn has is a brand name and a legion of sales people and contacts with local businesses. Unfortunately, GroupOn has a way of doing terrible things to local businesses that can't operate at the scale of something like GroupOn and which lack (in a sadly large number of cases) the simple business math skills to know when a GroupOn deal is no good for them. So, the two assets GroupOn has (brand and sales/contacts) are both fairly impaired and much more easily replicated than what Amazon has to offer: logistics, infrastructure and algorithmic secret sauce... not to mention brand and customer loyalty.
- hcurtiss 15y agoThe bleeding has slowed, but still bleeding. Difficult to gauge whether the patient will survive. That people pour(ed) so much money into this continues to astound me. Also surprised by the upbeat comments here.
- Steko 15y agoI'm surprised by the continued negative drum beating by some. The technocommentariat has had it in for their favorite "big Ponzi scheme" for awile but ... here Groupon is, not going bankrupt like the top comments in every related HN thread for the last year have assured us they shortly would. On the contrary they're doing great.
- gergles 15y agoYeah, losing $10+MM a quarter sure is "doing great" by any normal person's intepretation of the phrase.
- jcampbell1 15y agoThese numbers were released after the close, but every trader and their brother was buying this morning. Insider trading is rampant on Wall St. This is clearly yesterday's news for the privileged few.
- sabat 15y agoThese guys are widely seen as a shifty bunch.
- dude_abides 15y agoInsider trading is like pissing in the pool. It sounds dirty, but really isn't that big a deal. http://twitter.com/#!/GSElevator/status/197718817382739968 http://twitter.com/#!/GSElevator/status/197718817382739968
- hkmurakami 15y ago>every trader and their brother was buying this morning I've noticed over the past year that such stock price behavior is particularly acute near market close (which is perhaps when the less-priviledged-of-the-priviledged-few get in on the info.).
- noname123 15y agoEh, it's actually because everyone who's shorting GRPN covering their shares prior to the catalyst event. Everybody knew that GRPN's earnings were going to be positive (not positive but that it's going from red ink to earning $0.01/share, ha), so even though this company is POS. For the short-term, you don't want to going against the herd who will be turning around from bashing to mildly praising. When shorts cover, it's a wave that eventually lead to a squeeze which causes more shorts to cover - lifting the price. Personally, this is a great event. GRPN will go up a little, leaving it more room for the slow bleed later and given that there's also weekly option series. GRPN is a great stock to trade.
- timaelliott 15y agoRelevant + Show HN: https://analytics.savvr.com/login https://analytics.savvr.com/login username: groupon / password: data Interactive reporting of every Groupon deal, this demo account goes back to 2011.
- usaar333 15y agoWhat is the data source?
- timaelliott 15y agoOur own data. We collect, cleanse and analyze data from the local commerce industry. Our database contains about 3M deals which represent around $4B in consumer spending. We currently track about 260 deal sites in North America, including Groupon. Our platform is continually monitoring the industry from a variety of sources. The reporting platform and API runs off a dimensionally modeled DB. The UI is pretty rough at this point, really just a MVP to demonstrate our data and the direction we are headed.
- ahi 15y agoGRPN reported $1,354,800,000 in gross billings for the quarter ending March 31st. You data shows $465,383,098. Still more scraping to do.
- timaelliott 15y agoOur platform currently tracks Groupon.com which covers US and Canada. Groupon has 47 technically separate sites to make up their full international business.
- cantbecool 15y agoI guess DHH will have to put his foot in his mouth now.
- staunch 15y agoNah. He already figured out what to say any time he's wrong: "Well, they won the lottery!"
- cantbecool 15y agoI guess DHH will have to put his foot in his mouth now.
- antr 15y agoUnfortunately "good" or surprising results do not justify a high valuation. Regardless of the company. I won't get tired of saying this.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mbell 15y agoDoes this report in combination with the board members who resigned ~2 weeks ago smell somewhat...fishy...to anyone else? If things were going so well, why did 2 board members bail?
- rmATinnovafy 15y agoGroupon (and the million of copies) only proves the need for better marketing options for businesses (all sizes). It has broken the barries of online marketing by showing the common person that they can profit from internet marketing. There is so much potential and money in this area that I sometimes wonder why more startups are not attacking it.
- brokentone 15y agoEhh, I'm going to wait and read the story when their second set of numbers comes out. Happened twice so far...